Today in “I can’t remember the Italian word for it”

First, a little backstory. It’s been hot here in Italy for the past week. So hot, that in Rome last Friday I got heat rash on my lower calves that didn’t go away ‘til two days ago. So hot that the ants who’ve been wreaking havoc on our plants and flowers by covering them in aphids have been hiding underground. So hot that the cactus on one of our balconies died. It’s been really hot.

Needless to say, we don’t have air conditioning. What we do have is lots of windows and terrace doors. Which we can’t open.

Because we live in a valley between some hills and half our house is on stilts above a little river, at nighttime it cools off some twenty to twenty-five degrees bringing the temperature from “inferno” to “sweatshirt & cut-offs”. Outside.

Inside, the house stays at “fourth circle of hell”. The outside walls that bake in the sun all day retain the heat and transfer it through the concrete into the house which averages a temperature of about thirty degrees Celsius. Because the flies and the mosquitoes like to come inside and Italians don’t like screens (or they didn’t when this place was built), we can’t open the doors and windows to let in the breeze.

We were sitting at the bar with F. in what used to be a piazza but is now really just a strip of the SS4 with some parking spots, getting eaten by mosquitoes as the sun set behind the south hills when V. asked a very important question.

“Oh. Where can we get the, you know….Nancy, how do you say in italian?”

“Um. Wait. I know the word,” I started. “Shit. I don’t remember. I don’t have my dictionary.”

I resorted to crossing all my fingers in front of my face in some demented lattice-type gesture. “You know, “ I said in Italian.  “Per le finestre. Aria, si. Mosche e zanzare, no?”

After laughing at me, F. said, “Zanzariera?”

Of course. So we went to the store and got this fab netting that you attached to Velcro strips that you stick to the window frame and now we have “air, yes. Flies and mosquitos, no.”

My Favorite Restaurant in Rome isn't Italian

          

We took the bus into Rome with the sole purpose of hitting the International market for some impossible-to-find-here items: fish sauce, lite soy, rice vinegar.

After circling the indoor Mercato Esquilino several times to ensure we got the best deal on our fish sauce and some bonus jalapeno peppers and Hopia cakes, it was nearing that magical hour when thoughts turn to lunch and the possibility of being shut out because you’ve taken so long to decide that it’s 2:30p and no one’s serving anymore.

We lugged our doubled-up plastic bags back to Termini, thinking we’d just leave ‘em at the baggage drop. Sadly, the line looked to be about an hour long and the hands on the clock were nearing 1pm, also known as Italian Lunch Time.

We thought about taking the subway somewhere else, but the Rome subway sucks. There are two lines that kind of make an “x”, crossing at the Stazione Termini, but since anytime they tried to dig the tunnels more ruins were found, neither line goes anywhere we wanted to be. We could’ve gotten close to the Spanish Steps or sort of north-ish of the Vatican, but that would’ve meant heaving those bottle-laden bags around aimlessly and inevitably settling for some sort of Italian lunch that I, frankly, had no interest in eating. I was in Rome, a capital city. A place that should have options. I did not want Italian food.

Neither of us had noticed a promising looking Chinese or Indian place near the market, though we’d passed several dingy ones, so we headed into the Botti bookstore in the station. I grabbed an Insight Guide, flipped to the area map section and saw Hang Zhou, a name I’d seen a few times during internet searches for dim sum in Rome (no dice on that, by the way).  Reviews had been mixed.  Lots of “great spring rolls” and some “eh, it’s ok” and a few things that led me to believe it was a regular old tourist-heavy Chinese place. This book said something along the lines of “when you just can’t face another slice of pizza” and it was nearby. I was all about both of those factors and V. was getting crankier as the minutes passed.

We walked a few blocks east, around the giant Santa Maria Maggiore, past the “Menu: first, second, garnishing, dessert. No service charge. €22” chalk boards to via S. Martino ai Monti, 33.

Same place I’d read had cheap Chinese, photos of the owner with famous people and other things that hadn’t thrilled me.

What I found was my own little Thai/Japanese nirvana.  Ownership change, maybe?

We couldn’t really see in, blocked as the windows were with photos of nigiri sushi, sashimi, salads, and don bowls, but there were people inside, so we went for it. I looked to the right and saw some Germans eating noodle-based dishes and lost a bit of enthusiasm. So many Chinese restaurants I’ve been to in Italy are filled with folks eating china-fied versions of the Italian mid-day meal: a plate of pasta, maybe “ravioli” (wontons, to me) and a plate of meat. Then I saw it. The thing that makes me truly happy when I walk into a restaurant serving raw fish: lots of people eating it. There was a young Italian couple with a wooden boat full of sushi and a bottle of white wine. There were two large tables full of Japanese-American teenagers with boats and platters full of everything.

For  €14.90 each plus drinks, this place offers all you can eat everything. And it’s good. So good that I was so busy enjoying it, I forgot to take photos of our tako su, sliced octopus and seaweed in a vinegary dressing, or of other peoples nigiri sushi, tempura and onigiri. I didn’t try any of the Thai dishes, but the Germans seemed to be enjoying them.

If you’re ever in Rome near the train station around lunch time, don’t want to spend a fortune and cannot face a bowl of pasta and a cutlet of some kind, forget what you read about it on the interwebs and go here. You could even order from the to-go menu, with some additional items not on the “buffet” menu, and have a picnic under a tree in the park a few blocks away.  Only tell me first. I don’t want to get there and find there’s no seat left for me.

Hey, Beep Beep

We just heard the strangest thing. Five or six cars driving past the house, honking their horns.

This is weird on so many levels. You see, Italian drivers don’t “honk”. They tailgate. They pass on the most unlikely curves. They park all willy-nilly, pulling up behind you to block your car when there are plenty of real spots available. They sit benignly in the blocked in car, patiently awaiting the owner of the other to come out and free them so they can careen off down the street, but they do not honk.

V. ran to the front balcony to see what was happening. Maybe it was a bunch of old cars, macchine d’epoca, on the way to some auto show who sometimes honk as they pass through our town, old Fiats and Autobianchi. But, no. 

There was an RV at the front of the line of cars and it was going rather slowly. Maybe that’s what the “Beep. Beepbeepbeep. Beep. Beep” was all about. The line of cars behind it just couldn’t bear the snail’s pace and wanted to urge the driver of the RV to just speed the hell up for f@%&’s sake. Oh wait. That's what I would do on the Taconic Parkway. No. That wasn’t it. 

One of the cars had a sign and streamers hanging off the back. Maybe it was a wedding. Because Italians do not honk to let you know you’re coming perilously close to crashing horrifically into their lap because you opted to ignore the sign instructing you to “Yield”. No, they give a little friendly toot only to say, “Hey, look at me! Aren’t I fab?”  For Italians, the horn is apparently the mechanical equivalent of the glitter on their outfits.

E(arthquake) S(leep) P(rivation)

It was Saturday night and I was going through my usual routine of desperately trying to fall asleep while V. snuffled and snored next to me. I resisted the urge to reach over and click the crown on my old Timex Indiglo watch with the old man expandable metal link band picked up in a Salvation Army years ago to see what time it was, as knowing the hour usually makes it that much harder to actually sleep while my mind starts calculating how many hours until a respectable wake-up time and if I just fall asleep right now I can get six  hours…five…four…and I thought I felt the bed rumble. I figured it must’ve just been V. exhaling a particularly raucous and rumble-y snore as I was actually, maybe, drifting off but it was enough to get me to High Earthquake Alert and I spent some more time tossing and turning and wondering if I’d have time to grab my wedding rings off the dresser--certainly not enough time to get the earrings out of the safe but maybe enough time to grab boots instead of flip flops--if I had to run out the door to avoid the roof caving in on me. I awoke at some point, again neglecting to check the time, to hear the starlings outside the window and see that the sky had lightened to grey. It was still early enough to flop over and sleep some more.

I got up later Sunday morning and checked the Earthquake site, as I am wont to do every single day upon waking and saw that there had been a particularly huge quake in the Emilia-Romagna region north of here. Five point nine the site said. Preceded by smaller ones. Followed by others, the aftershocks causing more damage.

Four (or is it now up to seven?) people died. Factories collapsed. Aftershocks caused clock towers to fall. Houses are missing chunks of wall. Four thousand people are unable to return home. In twenty seconds. God, I’m terrified of earthquakes.

The site showed the time of the big quake as 4:03 “in the night”, as they say here. Four A.M. When the sky is beginning to lighten and the birds starting to chirp.

Clearly, I am clairvoyant. The feeling of impending doom that kept me up was my sixth sense. As I lay in bed the night before, I felt on a subconscious level the imminent tremblor. Or maybe I caused it with my thoughts, my impressive brain controlling the movement of the earth’s plates.  Or maybe, the fact that I am constantly thinking about earthquakes, worrying about what to do if one happens, endlessly mapping out my running routes for V. in case there’s one while I’m out and he needs to tell the Civil Protection folks where to search the rubble, maybe it’s just inevitable that every single quake happens to coincide with my constant thought of them.

Come si dice….humiliated?

Sometimes, when I’m struggling for a word in Italian and I’m too lazy to take out my dictionary or the situation doesn’t warrant such an interruption, I just “Italian”-ize an English word. Sometimes, it works beautifully.  Like, for example, I once added an "o" to the word “jealous” and got “geloso”. It was exactly what I meant, so another time I added an "o" to "nervous" and was just as lucky. Er, successful. 

Sometimes, the word you want is Italian. Like pizza or diva.  

Sometimes, it's not that easy. Sometimes, it's like guido or bimbo. The former meaning, "I drive" and the latter meaning "child".  It can make translating episodes of the Jersey Shore impossible and conversations interesting. Also, sometimes? Well, listen:

We were in L.’s new house in the hills outside of Ascoli with its very American open kitchen/living/dining area, and a rather international crowd having a lovely time together, drinking wine, cooking dinner. There was A. from France and her Italian boyfriend, a few Ascolani locals and L., V., and I from NY. Everyone there has been to the town we live in and know how quiet it usually is, so when they asked what was new here, V. and I were thrilled to actually have a bit of excitement to share.

On Friday afternoon, V. was standing outside chatting with someone when a car passed another and stopped dead in the middle of the street. Another car slammed on the brakes behind the first two. What had been the first car was now boxed in.

“What?!”

Then, the drivers of the two cars got out and pulled the people out of the middle car.

“Who these men are? What they wanted? Fight?”

We did our best. 

We used bastardized phrases in two languages.

“Macchine normali.”

“Non c’e luce sopra.”  

“Maybe drugs.”

"Cars normal, no lights on top, clothes, um...."

I made the Italian sign for “arrested”, crossing my wrists in front of me.  “You know…. they were…OK.  The men doing the jumping and the pulling were, you know, um, how do you say? Polizia! Senza, uh, costumi. Um. Sotto coperto.”

Yes, they were police, without bathing suits. Under the blanket.

Turns out, the word I was looking for was incognito.

15 (or so) Things

1- Cheez-itz

2- cheap running clothes

3- boot leg jeans (esp. 100% cotton ones)

4- cheap, plentiful advil

5- 100% cotton t-shirts cut for people w/hips & upper arms

6- effective bras

7- running bras

8- herb variety, fresh and dried (e.g., fresh cilantro, dill, cumin)

9- cheap facial cleanser (cetaphil is like €12 euro-if you can find it! That’s around $17)

10- bacitracin

11- flannel pajamas

12- 100% cotton sheets

13- Ziplocks

14- Bonne Bell dr. pepper lip balm in drug stores

15- drug stores in general

16- flour tortillas

17- washing machines that take less than 3 hours to do a load of laundry

18- electric clothes dryers

19- Italian made shoes and clothing that are actually affordable

20- sales throughout the year

21- a pay check

22- english magazines & books. Inexpensive mags and books. Why is it that these are cheaper in France than in Italy???

23- men’s speed stick deodorant (not the white kind; the green, blue or clear kind)

24- maple syrup

25- brown sugar for baking

25- Burt’s Bees honey lip balm

26- LA Colors nail art polishes

27- Atomic Fireballs

28- bbq (like, real deal, pulled pork, wet and dry, with collards & baked beans and corn on the cob)

29- butterscotch hard candies

30- Reese’s peanut butter cup minis

31- Nexcare waterproof bandaids

32- Sun Chips

33- ace bandages

34- tootsie rolls

35- twizzlers

36- charms lollipops & blow pops

I know, it’s way more than 15 Things.  It’s currently at 36 Things and every day I think of one or two more, but when my sister asked me to send her a list of 15 things I miss here in the land of “if it’s not pasta, made in Italy (or China) and/or costs a thousand euros, you can’t have it” while she’s in the land of 24 hour mega stores containing everything anyone in the entire world has ever produced, my mind first turned to food-type things that I can’t get here: cheez-its, soft brown sugar, cilantro. It then went out into the atmosphere, to the esoteric, to the impossible, to the candy store and right back to food.

The more I thought about it, the more I thought that a) though I miss these things, if I were to get any of them, I’ll likely hoard them for fear of getting too used to them and then have to face not having them again so if I got them, they’d likely  just take up space* and b) I don’t miss the “things” themselves so much as I miss their availability, their ubiquitous-ness in the US.

I thought of the recipes I find on the internet or see things my friends at home are making with their easily found ingredients and get jealous.  Rice wine vinegar? Fresh ginger? Various fresh chili peppers? Cardamom?! Y’all are just rubbing it in.

spoils of a trip to Civitanova

I can get soy sauce from the supermarket here in my little town, but I’m still not sure who here’s buying it and why. I can find all sorts of asian ingredients. If I drive an hour and a half in each direction. “Mexican” is limited to overpriced Uncle Ben’s “mexican beans” and corn tortillas and only at the hypermarkets in the larger “cities”. I might find an avocado in one store, a lime in another and possibly a sad looking jalapeno in a third, but if I do, it’s because I’ve driven to three different stores along the 40km route to the beach that takes an hour each way plus shopping time and stopping a few times to “catch a coffee”. Or, I didn’t buy the avocados because I wasn’t sure I’d find the red onion and the lime and when I saw the lime, I didn’t want to go back to the first store for the avocadoes and, anyway, I was too disgusted at not finding everything for guacamole in one store to want to make anything. I just wanted to eat a box of Cheez-itz. Which don’t exist here. It’s frustrating.

Then I thought about clothing. If I want stretchy, skinny leg, bedazzled jeans or, let’s face it, hooker heels, I’m in business. If I want a padded bra with no real support and straps that dig into my shoulders or a sweater that’s narrower and longer than I am, not a problem.  Except, I don’t want them.

The Italians I see all seem to have the same style and while part of it may be a cultural reluctance to be different, really I think they just have no other choice. They can’t look different because they can’t find anything different. From the mall stores to the weekly markets, it’s all the same stuff. And I don’t want it. I want other stuff.

I want 100% cotton, bootleg jeans. I want t-shirts that stop at my hips. I want shoes and boots that are free of sparkles and studs. I want choices. I want cheap choices. I want sales all year long. I want Barneys and Bergdorf’s. I want Saks off 5^th and Neiman Marcus Last Call. I even want that bastion of Italian bargains, Daffy’s, where all the sad little Patrizia Pepe and Mötivi pieces are sent and sold for a quarter of their Italian prices. 

Why don’t they keep it here? Why are there no off-price stores in Le Marche? Why can’t I find more than one type of sports bra in the four different stores that actually carry athletic-ware? Why are all the unsold items sent to the UK and the US? (TJ Maxx, I’m talking to you. There’s an untapped market here in Italy, filled with expats like me.) Why are Italian made shoes, in the shoe-making capital of Italy, more expensive here than in New York or Paris?

Here, it’s all castrato, cicoria, and amatriciana all the time. It’s stretchy and spangly and just like your neighbor’s. And your neighbors’ neighbors. Sometimes, you just want something else.

I guess I just want some choices. I miss the choices. The nearby choices.  The CVSs, Duane Reades, mega malls, department stores. The Trader Joes and 24 hour Stop and Shops.The nail polish, the perfume, the moisturizer.

OK. I admit it. Sometimes, I miss the stripmall. And the 7-11.  Even, on occasion, the Starbucks, if only so I can walk around with a large cup of coffee that takes more than thirty seconds to drink.  Yes, the very things that make America kind of icky, totally not charming and completely bland while driving through? I miss them. Because in those generic, cookie cutter strip malls of Duane Reades and Marshall’s are all the things I can find to make my day-to-day a little bit less so.

*this is not to say that I wouldn’t be delighted to have any of these things show up on my doorstep. I would not hoard them. I swear. Who needs my address?

New Word: Terremoto

In Italy, there are a lot of earthquakes. Like, everyday, somewhere, there’s an earthquake. I know this because I check the Instituto Nazionale di Geofisica e Volanologia (INGV) website every morning. And sometimes in the afternoon. And sometimes, before I go to bed.

In Italian, these events are called “terremoti”. A rather literal and descriptive word meaning, as I translate it, “land motion/s”.  I, however, call such an occurrence a “terror-moto” because I am terrified of them.

I’ve seen the destruction they cause. We were in l’Aquila, a provincial capital, whose center was, for all intents and purposes, destroyed by an earthquake in 2009. This quake happened at 3:30am, had a magnitude of around 6 and lasted, I’m told, for thirty seconds. Buildings collapsed. People died. The rubble is still around, behind fences.  Military squads are posted around the center to keep people away from the more precarious structures and buildings outside the center are riddled with cracks and holes. It's a terrible reminder of the rapid devastation a quake can inflict.

I lie awake at night, planning possible escapes. Around here, there are bridges built by the Romans that are still standing, yet the cement bleachers by the community pool built in 2009 are a crumbling mess. Our house was built in the ‘80s and everyone assures me that earthquake proof standards were met.  I feel  the house shake when a particularly heavy speeding truck lumbers past and I see the cracks. I’m not sure I believe them.

Our bedroom sits atop a pillar that goes 3 stories down to the side of the hill that leads to the river. The one window opens onto nothing but the drop down to the back driveway. The door leads to the hallway, to the bathroom with a window on a terrace on the street. If I can make it to the hallway, maybe I can make it to the terrace. If it’s still there. I’m pretty confident that if I make it to the street and head in the direction of Rome, the large building on the embankment across the road won’t fall on me. If I haven’t broken both ankles from the leap off the terrace.

This is what I was thinking about the night I felt my first quake. As I lay in bed, I heard a rumble, kind of like when the big trucks hurtle past, ignoring the “Slow down! Inhabited Center” sign. This rumble, though, worked its way up through the building and shook the bed, headboard to footboard, up against the wall for a couple of seconds. A magnitude 2.0 about 10km away. Not too bad. But worse than the one I felt in my fifty story office building in Manhattan. Not as bad as the last one I felt two months ago.

I was asleep. Like, truly asleep. As I turned over, the bed started shaking. A lot. I grabbed V. He snored.

I debated whether or not to wake him, whether or not to go to the bathroom, whether or not to keep breathing. This one lasted maybe 5 seconds which is an eternity when you can’t decide if another one’s coming that will cause your house to fall down with you in it and if so, would your husband rather be awake when it happens or not. Turns out that was it for the quakes that night. Also, it turns out, if I ever feel another terremoto, the husband would prefer to be awakened.